Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
Leadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis
Summary
Join us for a special "fireside chat" with Dantley Davis, Chief Design Officer at Twitter. We hosted a live conversation about Dantley's own path of becoming a design leader, diving into his influences and lessons learned along the way. We also discussed what it means to enable greater inclusivity and diversity in our field, particularly in these momentous times.
Key Insights
-
•
Military training cultivated Dan Lee's ability to manage both tactical and macro-level challenges, which he applies to design and leadership.
-
•
An MBA provided Dan Lee with strategic frameworks and a shared vocabulary to better integrate business goals with design decisions.
-
•
Design leadership often evolves organically from consistently delivering quality work and influence, rather than intentional career planning.
-
•
Dan Lee views shared ownership and influence in product development as more effective than rigid role ownership between designers and PMs.
-
•
The ‘tax’ of being a person of color or woman in tech includes balancing job responsibilities with advocating for community equity.
-
•
Intentional diversity hiring requires proactive outreach, relationship-building, and compensation incentives for leadership.
-
•
Authentic, vulnerable conversations about race and inclusion can foster understanding and material change in organizations.
-
•
Designers must expand empathy beyond similar peers to include underrepresented and diverse user groups to avoid narrow product focus.
-
•
Recruitment of diverse talent is not passive; it requires strategic relationship-building with communities and organizations.
-
•
Having leadership compensation tied to diversity outcomes, as at Twitter, helps embed accountability for inclusive hiring.
Notable Quotes
"My dad told me very early on in my career that I had to work two times harder than anyone else to get the same things."
"Ownership needs to be shared. The craft of making is similar to raising a child — it takes a village."
"I approached design not from the context of user experience first, but from what job we’re trying to satisfy for our customers."
"There were things I controlled and things I didn’t, and I needed to plan for both."
"It was a tax I had to pay my entire career — balancing the work and trying to lift my community."
"Every manager who works with me knows their responsibility includes sourcing candidates for diverse backgrounds."
"If you don’t have those challenges, it’s a lot easier to make it in the corporate world."
"You need to ask, who are you excluding in the conversation? That’s the disservice to empathy."
"I made an explicit choice: we’re not making any offers until we’re interviewing women."
"Designers who come out of US tech need to pivot quickly toward broader inclusion or risk being outpaced by other markets."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Jamie Foxx spent 14 hours with his eyes closed to inhabit Ray Charles’ world."
Daniel GloydDesigning From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research
February 12, 2026
"Starting meetings with simple icebreakers or sharing pronouns and locations really breaks the ice and builds relationships."
Deirdre Hirschtritt Cesar Paredes Marie PerrotResearch is Only as Good as the Relationships You Build
November 17, 2022
"It was like arriving to your home after a long day and just right to rest but at the same time you know you could not wait to continue working."
Benjamin RealMaturity Models: A Core Tool for Creating a DesignOps Strategy
October 1, 2021
"You can look at a company’s impact reports and funding sources to sniff out if something feels too good to be true."
Max Gadney Andrea Petrucci Joshua Stehr Hannah WickesAssessing UX jobs for impact in climate
August 14, 2024
"From fast-paced tech worlds, you will appreciate the patience and perseverance it takes to move an old champion."
Lada GorlenkoTheme 1: Intro
January 8, 2024
"I asked myself, will I take the leap or will I take permission? And this gamble paid off."
Feyikemi AkinwolemiwaPlay to innovate: How curiosity and experimentation transform UX
March 11, 2026
"Cohorts are a super duper fun way to engage with more of our community."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
March 29, 2023
"User recordings are your most valuable asset but have become riskier due to biometric privacy laws."
Llewyn Paine[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings
June 5, 2024
"Celebrate progress continuously and use OKRs as a learning process to evolve goals and strategies."
Bria Alexander Benson Low Natalya Pemberton Stephanie GoldthorpeOKRs—Helpful or Harmful?
January 20, 2022
